HL

Your blindness is truly sad.
Or is it just that you do not have the intelligence to see things without your personal bias?

You 'quote' the Gospel of Mary (Magdalene) as: 'Jesus said there is no sin'.

Did your eyes not read the context? Did your brain not bother to check your own personal inequality and trust in the word of the one who so Loved 'Our Saviour'?

'25) Peter said to him (Jesus), Since you have explained everything to us, tell us this also: What is the sin of the world?

26) The Savior said There is no sin, but it is you who make sin when you do the things that are like the nature of adultery, which is called sin.

Jesus is quoted as saying, in answer to Peter's question; The Natural World has no sin. It is you (man) who MAKE sin.....

HL your blind hatred of things Gnostic is unworthy of a christian. I suggest you do not make such feeble attempts to inform us here of the things of which you either have not the faintest comprehension or which you are evilly trying to corrupt in the eyes of others, as such IS a man-made sin.

Since you refuse to answer my challenge to your theory of why Jesus-who-'is'-God asked why God had forsaken him on the cross (I attack your argument there, not you) I can only assume your argument is either false and Jesus Christ was NOT God or you do not have all the answers on biblical study and understanding. Or you are just plain wrong. Which is it?.

P.S. for the post, my personal belief is that God is currently best represented by the Quantum Foam which operates to connect us instantly to every other sentience in the Universe and perhaps even beyond, and through which it is possible to access infinite wisdom, if we free our minds from the shackles of physicality and acknowledge our spirituality and conscience and it's position of importance in our everyday lives.

Keiran,

Your Glenn Borchardt quotes are informative. Nonetheless, infinities do exist in QM. Also, the infintesimal. Sometimes these infinities are a mathematical nuisuance. Transitions from the infinitisal to the finite point to why universes are (the multi-verse is?).

Some QM senarios were initially examined non-relatistically. Herein, t (time) is decrete, say as a denominator in an equation. This is problematic, because of relativistic spacetime being enjoined. Dirac notations try to deal with this matter (dimensional components).

Some mindstretching stuff with infinties. Like some infinities being larger than other infinities, and, infinities raised by the power of infinities.

Photons are not alone in being identifical: So are electrons (Gell-Mann). You would know, from Atomic chemisty, that (identical) electrons can move between the outer shells of atoms. What Borchardt does not articulate is that the eigenstates of particles are variable (normalisations)and it is here we find differentiation.

QM is still underdevelopment. Perhaps, new calculi will need to be developed to manage this development. Herein, there could be a shift in using integers, towards something more geometric in nature.

Just the same, the fundamentals of "How does the Universe exist?", now exists in as a rough diamond, in providing conceptualisations (some tested) of the transition of infinite indeterminance and finite determinance.

Herein, the gods, which are the contrivinces of Man, exist, within a macro-matter universe. The QM micro-world is more fundamental than cosmology, humans or gods. We, and our mind, and imaginings, are built from such stuff.

Sells,

I await your reply, please. [I did note your earlier post about Jesus being an historical person. I think this likely.]

-"How does Mithras exist?"

Relda,

I guess the difficulty in studying the Jesus character is, his life fits between two confabulations [not total fictions]. The first, the OT. The second the NT. It is a pitty, we do have to hand pricisely contemporaneous accounts c.20-30/33.

Have you read Karen Armstrong? Someome whom took a step back to study "theology" rather than a religion

Oliver, Thanks for the mention of KA. I found this quote from Karen Armstrong (a "freelance monotheist” and ex-nun), to perhaps sum up what theology should achieve, “If your understanding of the divine made you kinder ... and impelled you to express this sympathy in concrete acts of loving-kindness, this was good theology," she writes. "But if your notion of God made you unkind, belligerent, cruel, or self-righteous, or if it led you to kill in God's name, it was bad theology."

Unfortunately, her Christian allegiance would not rank as sufficiently firebrand, in the Fundamentalist view at least, given her strong tolerance toward other religions – particularly Islam. She’s managed to raise the ire of both Christian fundamentalists and atheists alike (this perhaps makes me a bit of a fan). Armstrong says that just as there is good and bad sex or art so too is there is good and bad religion. “Religion is hard work”.

She sees nothing extraordinary in the persons of Calvin or Luther and views the Reformation as having created more death and violence than what it was worth – perhaps a challenging view. It needs mentioning, many individuals within history merely represent an apex of an existing process or idea. This makes them no less important but they certainly owe their destiny to a birthright given to timing, location, endowment and a particular ‘calling’ - to which they’ve responded

Brainy... to understand Jesus utterance on the cross it is neccessary to digress momentarily.

Luke 24:44-48

He said to them, "This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms."

45Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. 46He told them, "This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, 47and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. 48You are witnesses of these things.

COMMENT The above encompasses all that occurred in Jesus life.
"All that is written" includes the Messianic Psalm 22

The words Eli Eli Lama Sabachthani are the opening words of that Psalm. There are other sentences in the psalm relating to the crucifixion, including

["They divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing."]

This same principle applies to Jesus cleansing the temple. "Thus it is written, my house shall be called a house of prayer" but you have made it a den of robbers.
His disciples recalled that it was written " for zeal for your house consumes me" Psalm 69:9

I hope this helps to fit it all together.
regards

Relda

Can you cite me some sentences in the Book of John that seem gnostic to you, so that I can take a look?

___________

Genesis lays out the beginning of mankind and the reasons why it is so violent. If one accepts the premises of Genesis, if one trusts it as
being accurate (not chronological, but accurate), then God's premise that mankind can never become as God will steer one's understanding of the rest of the Bible.

For this reason, the gnostic premise that man can become as god/return to a perfect/godly state, is diametrically opposed to the Bible. For this reason, it is called anti-Christ, or against what Christ came do say to mankind, and do for mankind, provide the only path to salvation -- through him. The fundamental premise of the Bible is denied by the gnostic premise of self-created perfection.

Some consequences:

If the premise of Genesis is true that mankind is bent towards evil (the heart of man, as the biographies in the Old Testament are meant to reveal to mankind, then it is a factual impossibility for man to perfect himself through gnosis. That is, the premises and statements in the gnostic gospels mislead, and redirect.

If the bent of mankind is towards destruction, then giving man the choice to follow his own lead, will lead to further destruction, further violence to others.

It comes down to whether one trusts the words of the Bible as God revealing himself to mankind, in truth.

That is, Is God trustworthy? A question of God's character.

The Bible is intended to show that he is and has always been trustworthy. He fulfills his prophecies and his promises.

Hawaiilawyer,
The Gospel according to John was probably written for Hellenized Jews. The use of both Pagan and Christian Gnostic symbolism throughout the Gospel and the fact that the Gospel was originally written in Greek indicate that those to whom this Gospel was directed had to have been people (whether “elite” or “non-elite”) who knew and understood the myths and symbolism of the Hellenized world around them.

Dualist themes (a component of Gnosticism) are expressed in John:
· Light/darkness.
· Flesh/spirit.
· Birth/death.

Many of the stories in John are laden with symbols e.g. The Samaritan Woman at the Well where these symbols center around water: a well, drink, water jar, leading to other symbols — spirit, truth, food etc.

John has Jesus using “living water” in “conceptually parallel ways”: The Old Testament, Jewish monuments, and Jewish institutions are contrasted with the “gift of Jesus.”
· Water was a metaphor for the Spirit in both Old Testament and Rabbinic thought.
· The metaphor of the living water depicts two things:
The valueless institution which Jesus replaces in his person.
The newness Jesus brings.

Examples of other stories, highly symbolic:
· The marriage at Cana.
· The story of the loaves and fishes.
· The story of the man born blind from birth.
· The story of the raising of Lazarus

On the subject of Gnosticism: Jung claimed, "In the ancient world, the Gnostics, whose arguments were very much influenced by psychic experience, tackled the problem of evil on a broader basis than the Church Fathers." It is no exaggeration to say that the theological positions of most mainstream denominations in their approach to pastoral care, as well as in their doctrines and liturgy - have become more or less identical with Jung’s psychological/symbolic theology.

Those who claim to know nothing about ultimate reality are called agnostic (literally, "not knowing"), the person who does claim to know such things is called gnostic ("knowing"). The Greek language distinguishes between scientific or reflective knowledge ("He knows mathematics") and knowing through observation or experience ("He knows me"), which is gnosis.